Several serious problems have been discovered in the Linux kernel. This update takes care of Linux 2.4.18 for the alpha, i386 and powerpc architectures. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems that will be fixed with this update:

CAN-2004-0003

A vulnerability has been discovered in the R128 drive in the Linux kernel which could potentially lead an attacker to gain unauthorised privileges. Alan Cox and Thomas Biege developed a correction for this

CAN-2004-0010

Arjan van de Ven discovered a stack-based buffer overflow in the ncp_lookup function for ncpfs in the Linux kernel, which could lead an attacker to gain unauthorised privileges. Petr Vandrovec developed a correction for this.

CAN-2004-0109

zen-parse discovered a buffer overflow vulnerability in the ISO9660 filesystem component of Linux kernel which could be abused by an attacker to gain unauthorised root access. Sebastian Krahmer and Ernie Petrides developed a correction for this.

CAN-2004-0177

Solar Designer discovered an information leak in the ext3 code of Linux. In a worst case an attacker could read sensitive data such as cryptographic keys which would otherwise never hit disk media. Theodore Ts'o developed a correction for this.

CAN-2004-0178

Andreas Kies discovered a denial of service condition in the Sound Blaster driver in Linux. He also developed a correction.

These problems will also be fixed by upstream in Linux 2.4.26 and future versions of 2.6.

The following security matrix explains which kernel versions for which architecture are already fixed. Kernel images in the unstable Debian distribution (sid) will be fixed soon.